Silverlight Not Supported on Some AMD Athlon Chips?

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This is an interesting thread on the Silverlight forums. It turns out Silverlight requires a processor that supports SSE and some of the older Athlon chips don’t. How many people does this affect? Probably just those four people in the forums. In other words, I realize this is a VERY small subset of the population and isn’t really that big a deal.

But I think it does show one of the things you get with 10 years of experience. Flash is arguably the most successful piece of software in the world from a ubiquity/deployment perspective and it’s due in large part to the fact that we keep the runtime small and try to include as many users as possible. 64 bit people, don’t yell at me, I know, I know, I’m sorry.

[tags]Silverlight, AMD[/tags]

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  • timb

    Minor thing, but you probably mean AMD Athlon.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Whoops, good call. Thanks Tim.

  • http://www.tareeinternet.com Carly

    Hmm odd, is this for the early AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core’s? That’s what mine is and i don’t have any problems, my RAM is even plain DDR and Silverlight runs fine.

  • http://savvasmalamas.com savvas.malamas

    You reminded me the.. “Experience matters”!

  • Roger Larsen

    Not sure this is a big issue. This is a 7 year old CPU.

    Does Flash 9.0 run on a 7 year old Linux build?

    When building software you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    I agree Roger, not a big issue. In fact I was surprised even 3-4 people on the forums were running into it. But software and hardware are two different things so I don’t agree with the 7 year old Linux example.

  • Roger Larsen

    I checked Microsoft’s minimum requirements for Silverlight, and it is not mentioned that the CPU needs to have SSE instructions. This should be updated.

    My point about the 7 year old Linux distribution is that it takes quite an effort to test software on every imaginable and unimaginable combination of operating systems and hardware. This is not necessarily something which comes with experience and it think this design was deliberate.

  • Nigel

    Hmm – My I’m pretty sure PC is less than couple of years old max (with an AMD 64 dual core) and that won’t run it.

  • Stuart Halliday

    I got the 1503 error today. Silverlight doesn’t like my 1GHz AMD Duron (Morgan) PC.

    I just wish it would stop bothering me to install it everytime I go to the Microsoft site!

  • Matthew H McKenzie

    It does need to be mentioned, I can’t install on a GenuineIntel Mendocino (2v) Celeron 533 either. Flash is the industry standard. I’m suppressing the update.

    Anything in the presentation layer should be as platform independent as possible. If it’s important then Flash 7 for backwards compatability. I should not need a new PC to view a Govt. website say.

  • Andrea D’Alessandro

    My Athlon-based desktop machine is capable of running XP, Vista (albeit slowly) and Windows Server 2003 R2 (the swiftest of the bunch), but it does not run Silverlight.
    And WSUS insists that I *need* to install it in order to be fully up-to-date.
    Result: I stay with Flash.

  • Firsto

    Anch’io ricevo il msg-id: 1503 ma quel che è strano è che il mio AMD Athlon XP-M 2600+ è piuttosto recente ed è compatibile MMX e 3DNow.
    Penso quindi che il problema non dipende dalla “anzianità” della CPU (come dite più sopra) ma solo da una scelta pro-Intel.
    Peccato … :(

  • Andy

    Unfortunately, same problem here – will not run on an older laptop. I was so excited – got a VGA converter to hook it up to my TV, went to Netflix to play some instant movies, and… can’t watch it because SilverLight will not install due to CPU incompatibility. Long live Flash – but alas, can’t watch Netflix via Flash. :(

  • http://n/a Bob Wylie

    Netflix abruptly changed their streaming video player to Silverlight which wouldn’t install on my Athlon 2000 XP CPU running on a Mainboard K7S5A motherboard since CPU was supposedly lacking SSE instruction set. It did install on my faster Athlon 2100 XP CPU running on my slower Soyo SY-K7VTA PRO motherboard, however so I moved the 2100 XP processor to the Mainboard motherboard, assuming that would fix the problem. It didn’t. I get the same failure so, apparently it has something to do with the motherboard/CPU interaction. Any thoughts?

  • PK

    I just ran into the same thing and Microsoft confirmed that it is not supported. They indicated, though I don’t think the person I was speaking to was qualified to say so, that version 3 does support AMD athlon processors. We’ll see

  • Bill

    Is there a way to fix this problem or do I have to buy a new computer just to watch netflix?

  • KM

    I had this problem with a AMD 64 X2 4400+ on an Abit KN8 Ultra motherboard. I discovered a setting in the BIOS that enabled or disabled SSE/SSE2. Once I enabled this setting Silverlight installed just fine.